Richard Drutchas asks if anyone has heard about bananas as a fungicide.  No.
But several commercial beekeepers here add one to two tablespoons of
cinnamon per pound of powdered sugar and terramycin mix and claim chalkbrood
is significantly less in treated colonies.  An old beekeeper on the
Washington coast wondered one day why cinnamon rolls (pastry) never mildew
under conditions which lead to mold on other pastry.  He tried cinnamon on
his bee hives and the bees cleaned up the chalkbrood quickly and the treated
hives didn't break down again, according to his report.

I'd like to see some of you give this idea a good test.  Maybe some of you
who keep bees in the blueberries in New Jersey or other wet parts of the
northeast, or maybe on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State might give
this a try.  Treat one half of the colonies (preferably at least 10) in one
or several apiaries and leave the other half untreated.  Visit the apiaries
in one or two weeks and count the number of cells of chalkbrood you see on
each of three brood nest frames (in the center of each broodnest) in the
treated and untreated hives.  Put the number in your field note book and
give us a report of the minimum, maximum, and average number of chalkbrood
cells in the treated and untreated hives.

James C. Bach
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